


every atom of you and every atom of me

by rain_sleet_snow



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, During Canon, Established Relationship, F/M, Falling In Love, M/M, Red String of Fate, Romantic Soulmates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-08
Updated: 2019-03-08
Packaged: 2019-11-14 02:47:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,431
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18043994
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rain_sleet_snow/pseuds/rain_sleet_snow
Summary: If the bond between them found its first tentative beginnings in Jedha, when Jyn ran into the crossfire to rescue a child and Cassian searched the collapsing catacombs to bring her to safety, then by the time they were screaming at each other on Eadu it had settled.





	every atom of you and every atom of me

**Author's Note:**

  * For [queenmidalah](https://archiveofourown.org/users/queenmidalah/gifts).



If the bond between them found its first tentative beginnings in Jedha, when Jyn ran into the crossfire to rescue a child and Cassian searched the collapsing catacombs to bring her to safety, then by the time they were screaming at each other on Eadu it had settled.

 

"Um," Bodhi Rook said extremely quietly, looking at Baze and Chirrut, after Jyn and Cassian had stormed off to separate ends of the ship. "Did you see..."

 

"See what?" Kaytoo demanded.

 

"Nothing," Bodhi said, with tell-tale haste, turning his attention back to his failing repairs. "Uh, if you can pass me that hydrospanner, I think I can get this set of valves working again."

 

Baze had already nodded very slightly, and Chirrut had inclined his head. There was, of course, no way for any of them to know how Chirrut had sensed the faint thread that linked Jyn and Cassian's wrists, the colour of arterial blood - only visible out of the corner of your eye, in certain lights, when half-awake.

 

Maybe it wasn't the kind of thing anyone saw with their eyes. Maybe it just felt that way.

 

Bodhi, having given up on the U-Wing and begun the process of stealing a shuttle with Kaytoo's assistance, thought that the bond’s appearance probably boded ill for the next few days, especially if Jyn (whose temper was more explosive than Cassian's, and who had just watched her father die in her arms) happened to notice it. But absolutely nothing that had happened to Bodhi over the last couple of weeks suggested that he was in for a peaceful life, so he set it aside with all the other potentially disastrous aspects of his current circumstances.

 

The Guardians wore the red braided bracelets that symbolised the affinity between a pair of matched souls, whether it was your heart or your mind or the skill of your hands that matched. Bodhi knew, because Galen had told him, that Jyn's mother had worn a red bracelet, but the match had been with Saw, once her quickest and sharpest colleague, not Galen, her husband. Bodhi had once heard Krennic joke about wearing a bracelet for Galen, since their two minds at work on the Death Star were as one.

 

Bodhi now knew that Jyn had inherited her father's thin, angry smile: in both cases, it covered their sharp teeth.

 

 

Baze found Jyn crouched in a dark corner of the hold, ripping furiously at the insubstantial curl of red around her wrist. After several minutes, she snarled with frustration and pulled a knife from her pocket.

 

"That doesn't work," Baze said. "I tried, years ago. Several times."

 

"Then what do you suggest I do?" Jyn growled.

 

"Wait until you don't want to rip his head off before you decide," Baze recommended.

 

Jyn let out another snarl, and dropped the knife. It clattered on the floor. She sat back, and drew her knees up to her chest, arms loosely hooked on top of them. With her unfocused eyes staring into the distance and her hair half-loose Baze could almost see the too-young hunter-killer Saw Gerrera had once made of her.

 

"I am sorry, little sister," Baze said, quietly, and touched her hair very lightly. He sat down next to her and looked into the shadows.

 

"Do you think he was telling the truth?" Jyn said at last. "That he'd been in this fight since he was six?"

 

"I think he was," Baze said.

 

"I was eight." Jyn wrapped her hand around her wrist and warped the insubstantial fabric of the link with her thumb. "But what does two years mean?"

 

Baze said nothing.

 

Jyn pulled her thumb from the loop she had made, and smoothed her link to Cassian Andor back into place with a thoughtless attention, over the beat of her pulse.

 

 

Chirrut Îmwe found Cassian Andor in the cockpit, sitting watch over the instruments while Kaytoo and Bodhi called orders and suggestions to each other, deep in the bowels of the shuttle. Every now and then it shuddered, but it seemed to keep flying.

 

Andor was cleaning a blaster, and pointedly ignoring the second heartbeat strung around his left wrist. Chirrut could tell by the way he favoured the right hand, and avoided using his left. Provided he only ever looked straight at it, or never looked at it at all, he would never have to see it.

 

Seemed like a sad way to live, in Chirrut's well-informed opinion.

 

Chirrut sat patiently with Andor for an hour, waiting for him to talk, and found that he would not. The blaster must be spotless by now. Chirrut could no longer hear polishing.

 

"Do you think Jyn can do it?" Chirrut said, growing bored with Andor's competitive silence-keeping. "Convince the Alliance?"

 

"If anyone can, it's her," Andor said. "She's the key."

 

"To more than just that, captain," Chirrut said. "I told you you carry your prison with you."

 

" _Madre que me parío_ ," Andor sighed. "Leave it, Master Îmwe."

 

After a long period of comparative quiet, Andor said: "She has a point. About some things." Pause. "A few things."

 

"What?" said Kaytoo, emerging unexpectedly from a maintenance vent.

 

" _Gah_ ," Andor said, knocking several items flying in his surprise. He must have been far more enveloped in his own thoughts than usual; Chirrut smiled at the floor. "Nothing, Kay."

 

"Are you sure?" Kaytoo said in a voice pregnant with doubt, and Andor snapped back _Yes_ so quickly Kaytoo took offence.

 

When Kaytoo had retreated in a clattering huff, silence returned to the cockpit. In it Chirrut heard, just faintly, the sound of Captain Andor pushing back his cuff, and running slow, thoughtful fingers over his skin.

 

 

Kaytoo was the first person to notice Cassian slipping from the meeting room, of course, because no-one else paid as much attention as they should to Cassian.

 

"Where are you going?" he said.

 

"Keep your voice down, Kay," Cassian hissed.

 

Kaytoo modulated his speakers. "Fine. And?"

 

"To talk to some friends. I'm just going to -" Cassian made an indeterminate gesture you would need a protocol droid to decipher - "have a word."

 

"Oh." Kaytoo digested this. "You want to try to... help... Jyn."

 

"We'll see. Don't get carried away. And don't let Jyn beat up any senators, even if they deserve it."

 

Cassian slipped away. No-one except Kaytoo realised.

 

He turned around and watched Jyn. With his superior height there was no need for him to wade into the crowd to see her, but if it did prove necessary to prevent her offering violence to (say) Senator Vaspar, he could shove everyone aside and be there in 0.3 seconds. Faster than Jyn.

 

Organics. They were slow and illogical and they laid a ridiculous emphasis on constructs with no basis in fact, such as the developing bond Bodhi Rook claimed to have seen forming between Cassian and Jyn. There was no such thing, of course, not really. Whatever was there they had made themselves, out of their own actions.

 

Kaytoo thought the alleged bond was both unnecessary and tactically inadvisable. But if Cassian had gone to gather Jyn an army, it seemed he must disagree.

 

 

Standing in the hangar with Cassian's eyes on her and her heartbeat rushing in her ears, Jyn had the strangest feeling: like the sun was rising in her chest, its first bright rays shining in her face. Bodhi had gone to start the pre-flight checks on the stolen shuttle, Baze to reload; Cassian's band of saboteurs and killers to collect their personal weaponry. They were as much alone as either of them was ever going to get, and Jyn would cheerfully have broken the neck of anyone who disturbed them now.

 

"I'm not used to people sticking around when things go bad," she said. Cassian's face was very close to hers, and there was something in his eyes she was overjoyed to see and too scared to name.

 

Cassian brushed the back of her hand with his palm, and slid the tips of his fingers beneath the link at her wrist, where his own pulse marched against hers.

 

Before he could take his hand away, Jyn turned hers over, and wrapped her hand around his wrist, where a double heartbeat kept time: hers, in the loop of fate hooked round his skin, and his, in his own veins.

 

They were almost, but not quite, synchronised - and yet they leapt in the same way, as Cassian's breath caught and her own hitched in her throat.

 

"Welcome home," Cassian said, and for just a moment, just a second, their two hearts beat in perfect time.

 


End file.
